Joshua to fight Molina in 2nd de­fense of heavy­weight ti­tle

An­thony Joshua will make the se­cond de­fense of his IBF world heavy­weight ti­tle in a fight against Amer­i­can chal­lenger Eric Molina on De­cem­ber 10.

Joshua's promoters an­nounced the fight yes­ter­day. It will take place at the Manch­ester Arena in north­ern Eng­land, a rare fight out­side Lon­don for the un­beaten Bri­tish boxer.

It is the 34-year-old Molina's se­cond world ti­tle fight, af­ter los­ing to com­pa­triot Deon­tay Wilder for the WBC belt in June last year. Molina beat To­masz Adamek in the 10th round of their fight for the IBF in­ter-con­ti­nen­tal belt in April.

Joshua, whose 17 straight pro­fes­sional wins have all come in­side the dis­tance, won the world ti­tle by knock­ing out Charles Martin in the se­cond round at Lon­don's O2 Arena in April. He suc­cess­fully de­fended the IBF belt with a sev­en­thround win over Dominic Breazeale, also in Lon­don.

Joshua had hoped to fight for­mer world cham­pion Wladimir Kl­itschko in De­cem­ber, but the bout was post­poned af­ter the Ukrainian picked up an in­jury.